Mini books: My Family and Mr McQueen

I have mentioned in a previous post that I recently attended a morning workshop by a delightfully inspiring lady called Renee Lighton, who has some fabulous ideas for facilitating  teachable moments in the home. You can visit her website here, and if you need some inspiration for helping your children with basic numeracy and literacy skills, I can recommend her book, Let's Get Ready. (Available in English, Afrikaans and Xhosa)

One of the many tools she shared with us during the workshop, was mini books made from a single piece of paper. There are thousands of how-to's all over the web for making these little folded booklets, this one being one of them and a lovely one at that!

I couldn't wait to get home and make a few of these for my children. And we haven't stopped making them yet!

Our first set was all about each member of the family.

 I had folded and 'illustrated' these for Sweetpea beforehand and she had so much fun completing them. She practiced writing each person's name on the dotted lines,

coloured their eyes and hair the appropriate colour,

asked us all what our favourite colour is,

and - her favourite page - had us all print our fingerprints.

She's carried these around with her for weeks now, and shows them to everyone who walks through our front door!

Sweetpea is simply smitten with Lightning McQueen at the moment. My children also get a kick out of reading the junk mail and supermarket ads that come with the community newspaper every Wednesday. So, while paging through a pamphlet from the HyperMarket last week, she was beside herself with joy when all the TV's they were advertising had pictures of Mr McQueen on the screens. She promptly asked for a booklet to be folded and the pictures to be cut out, and she happily proceeded to glue them into her book. It is dog-eared and dirty from being loved so much!!

We've also made a mini book to be decorated with a sheet of stickers her grandmother gave her, and when I gave her a new set of mini stamps recently, those had to be tried out in a little booklet of their own!

This is such a lovely way to engage a child in a current interest, and can be used in a myriad of ways! Watch this space for more on how we use mini books here at Joyful Mama's Place!